From commenter the Conster at Balloon Juice:

You only have to play 1-D chess when everyone else is eating paste.

“….and now Assad’s chemical arsenal will be in far better control than it would have been after a limited military strike.”

Spotted today on a vehicle today in central Missouri:

The irony and fairness would be even better if he had decent insurance at his job

in the food service industry because of Obamacare. And he made a living wage while selling those fries.

To republicans.

The neocon hacks are whining:

Marc Thiessen ‏@marcthiessen

But @BarackObama skips his daily intel mtg the day after a terrorist attack and goes to Vegas fundraiser and … [crickets] 1:26 PM – 13 Sep 12

The best response:

Scott Peterson ‏@petersonscott

@marcthiessen “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.” #WeRememberBushFAIL. 4:09 PM – 13 Sep 12

The guy who didn’t like to read:

Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House

February 2009

by Cullen Murphy and Todd S. Purdum

….Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: We had a couple of meetings with the president [George W. Bush], and there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. With the cyber-security meeting, he seemed-I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, the people who were briefing him. It was as though he wanted these experts, these White House staff guys who had been around for a long time before he got there-didn’t want them buying the rumor that he wasn’t too bright. He was trying-sort of overly trying-to show that he could ask good questions, and kind of yukking it up with Cheney.

The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader-well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?….

Monday, at the Obama White House:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

September 10, 2012

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 09/10/2012

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room

12:42 P.M. EDT

….Q    And finally, who does get the presidential daily briefing if he’s not there?  I saw this —

MR. CARNEY:  I saw that report.  It is hilarious to me —

Q    — if he’s not there?

MR. CARNEY:  He gets it every day, okay?  The President of the United States gets the presidential daily briefing every day. There is a document that he reads every day when he is not — well, he always reads it every day because he’s a voracious consumer of all of his briefing materials.  And when he is physically here, most days he has a meeting in his office, the Oval one — (laughter) — with participants in — his national security team, including obviously Tom Donilon and others.  He also has regular meetings with —

Q    This is about the physical briefing from whoever is giving it versus the written briefing?

MR. CARNEY:  This was a case of — I don’t know how far I want to go here, but I believe if you compare our foreign policy record with the one that preceded this one, we’re comfortable with that comparison.  And this President is very much steeped in the details of national security issues and the information that as President he received —

Q    Do you believe this report was misleading —

MR. CARNEY:  I believe the article written about it was amusing….

[emphasis added]

Today, bumpers stickers spotted on vehicles in west central Missouri:

Did anyone ask Joe Lieberman?

Ah, they must think the nation longs for the good old days.

Not exactly.

Via the Great Orange Satan:

 

NBC-Marist Polls – May 2012

Florida

Registered voters: n=1078, MOE +/- 3.0%

Do you think the current economic conditions are mostly something President Obama inherited or are they mostly a result of his own policies?

Economic conditions mostly inherited 56%

Economic conditions mostly result of his own policies 37%

Unsure 6%

Virginia

Registered voters: n=1076, MOE +/- 3.0%

Do you think the current economic conditions are mostly something President Obama inherited or are they mostly a result of his own policies?

Economic conditions mostly inherited 57%

Economic conditions mostly result of his own policies 36%

Unsure 7%

Ohio

Registered voters: n=1103, MOE +/- 3.0%

Do you think the current economic conditions are mostly something President Obama inherited or are they mostly a result of his own policies?

Economic conditions mostly inherited 57%

Economic conditions mostly result of his own policies 35%

Unsure 8%

If dubya were running today do you think he’d get to 35%? And Mitt Romney (r) wants us to return to the good old days. Good luck with that.

Previously: A Small Clique Of Legal Extremists… (February 24, 2008)

Charles P. Pierce, today:

[….]

“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him, after he gave a speech on human rights a block from his old home – the White House.

A speech on human rights.

Jesus wept.

[emphasis in original]

Be glad then, America.

We are not freakin’ worthy:

….Why in the hell do we insist on giving do-overs to the people who enabled the worst experiment in government since the elevat[i]on of Caligula’s horse?….

Yes, indeed. Go. Read the whole thing.

Today, at the White House:

At 5:22 in the video:

President Obama: ….All right, with that, I’m going to take a couple of questions.  Ben.

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. It’s a very busy time. If I may, I’d like to ask you about two other, uh, quickly, two other important issues in the news. Republican candidates have, um, taken aim at your approach to foreign policy, particularly the Middle East and Israel, and accused you, uh, of appeasement. I wanted to get your reaction to that. And also, I’m wondering if you personally intervened in any way in halting the sale of the morning after, uh, pill to those under seventeen, and whether you think, uh, politics trumps science in this case.

President Obama: Uh, ask Osama bin Laden and the twenty-two out of thirty top al Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field, uh, whether I engage in appeasement. Or whoever is left out there, ask them about that….

And, compare, from his predecessor (March 13, 2002):

Question: Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden.

dubya: Yeah.

Question: Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people, you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive?

dubya: Um, hm.

Question: Final part [crosstalk]…

dubya: Yeah.

Question: …deep in your heart don’t you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive you won’t really eliminate the threat of [crosstalk]…

dubya: Well, deep in my heart I know the man’s on the run, if he’s alive at all. And, uh, I, I, uh, you know, who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. Uh, we hadn’t heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person, uh, is, um, really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Uh, terror’s bigger than one person. And, uh, he, he’s just, he, he’s, he’s a person who’s now been marginalized. Um, his network is, uh, his, his host government has been destroyed. Um, he’s the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and, um, um, met his match. Uh, he is, uh, you know, as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who’s willing to commit youngsters to their death and he himself tries to hide, if in fact he’s hiding at all. So, I, I don’t know where he is. Nor, you know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, really, to be honest with you. I, I’m more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well supplied, that the strategy is clear, that the coalition is strong….

Who was appeasing when? No matter how hard they try not to, the republicans can’t help but point that out.

Game, set, match, election.

Ripley: Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?

Uh, yeah.

The Mighty Wurlitzer and the howling right wingnuts they cater to drive our political discourse. Our useless old media complies.

August 19, 2010 2:35 PM

Like Every Administration, White House Defends Obama “Vacation”

….This is Mr. Obama’s 9th vacation since taking office. As of today, he has spent all or part of 38 days on “vacation” away from the White House. He has also made 14 visits to Camp David spanning all or part of 32 days. It brings his total time away to all or part of 70 days.

It’s less than the “vacation” time taken during the same period by his immediate predecessor. (Former President George W. Bush gets the quotation marks too.)

As of this point in his 1st term, Mr. Bush had made 14 visits to his Texas ranch spanning all or part of 102 days. He also made 40 visits to Camp David spanning all or part of 123 days. His “vacation” total at this point in his presidency was all or part of 225 days away….

Of course, dubya, at the same point, was significantly disengaged by several orders of magnitude. That doesn’t matter, because, *IOKIYAR.

* it’s okay if you’re a republican

Not long to the remainder bin at one of those chain stores, eh?

Matthew Norman: How did this wastrel ever find his way to the White House?

It takes a certain minimal intelligence for the truly dim to have a notion of their own dimness, but this is denied George Bush. He has the self-awareness of a bison

Wednesday, 10 November 2010

….The process of historical revisionism has, like everything else, speeded alarmingly in the internet age. The emergence of Sarah Palin as an imaginable presidential candidate, allied to the unending travails of Obama, have induced in the amnesiac, the obtuse and the plain bananas a fondness for the memory of George W Bush.

It will not spread. If this great reader of history is concerned for his place in it – and that, needless to say, is why he hired a bright young groupie from Yale to write this memoir in something approximating English – he needn’t fret. In those few lists ranking all the presidents compiled since he left office, W is invariably in the bottom five.

For the two imbecile wars he began, for condoning torture by denying waterboarding was torture at all on the grounds that his lawyers said it was legal; for turning the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton into the crippling deficit that is bringing the age of American hegemony to a startlingly abrupt end; and for being the pitiably Wagnerian fool who stumbled on to the grandest stage without any apparent clue why or for what earthly purpose, there he will forever remain.

And that’s one of the better reviews.

We are not worthy. Jamil Smith, via Twitter, sums up the eight years of dubya’s reign in only six words:

Try not to ruin them, too. • RT @George_WBush: I’m now on Twitter & Facebook.    about 4 hours ago  via Twitter for iPhone  

[emphasis added]

You’ve got to believe that right wingnuttia just detests the wide dissemination of public speech made possible by this Internets thing. You know, that technological entity that Al Gore took the initiative to promote as a legislator.